This was not what made me stop speaking.
He’d shifted his hands so he could lower
himself to my back.
“And this is perfect.”
I grew still.
I felt him move even if I couldn’t quite feel
what he was doing. My guess was that he was running his lips along
a scar.
One of many.
I closed my eyes tight.
“You feel that, Frannie?” he asked.
“Please get up,” I requested.
He did not get up.
What he did was move upwards so his mouth was
at my ear.
“You don’t, do you, sweetheart?”
I opened my eyes but looked only at the
pillow. “Again, I’ll ask you to get up.”
“You know how you’re perfect?” he
queried.
I knew the glaring evidence of my
imperfection was right in front of his eyes but I did not point
that out to him for I didn’t wish to and he could bloody well see
it for himself.
I remained silent.
“You don’t feel much at your back. I gotta go
hard if I want you to know I’m touching you there. And the reason
that’s perfect when you think it’s imperfection is that they took
that from you. They crippled you here. This will never be the
same,” he said, and I could feel him running his hand down my back,
putting pressure into the touch so I could experience it.
“
They
did that, Frannie.
They
took that. And you
survived.”
“Yes, I am aware. I was there each time,” I
returned cuttingly, beginning to get angry at discussing something
I did not wish to discuss and he very well knew it.
“You survived.”
“I am aware.”
“They did not survive.”
I quieted.
“They’re beaten and broken and as good as
dead. Their lives are over. You, though, you’re here and getting
pedicures and worried about making your girl eat dinner alone,
carrying these marks not as their brand, but your badge of honor
because you survived. I know. I know the elves could have healed
you, taken this away.” His hand soothed deep down my back. “I know
Frey offered that to you. And I know you refused. That makes this
perfect, that you took from them what they did to you and twisted
it into something that was
yours
. Something that was
beautiful. Something that means you’re a fighter. A warrior.
Victorious. And you wear their mark as your medal of valor.”
I held my breath, no longer angry.
Now I was fighting trembling.
Noc continued talking.
“You don’t think you’re perfect but you are,
Frannie. Every inch.”
My voice was frail and wavering, I hated it
but for the life of me I couldn’t strengthen it, when I begged,
“Please stop talking.”
He shifted and I felt his teeth sink into my
skin at my shoulder blade. The sensation was there and gone before
I felt him smoothing the area, pressing deep with his thumb.
“I look at this and see beauty. I touch it
and love how it feels. I taste it and it tastes as gorgeous as the
rest of you.”
Gods
.
He was undoing me.
“Stop talking.”
He slid his knees out, straightening his
legs, covering me with his big body, his weight bearing into me,
his flawless chest with its perfect array of hair pressed into the
mess of my back.
Putting some of his weight in one forearm in
the bed, he shoved his other arm under me at my belly and held me
close, his mouth back to my ear.
“You say my light shines on your soul, do you
think for one second you’d be in my bed right now if your light
didn’t warm mine?”
I again closed my eyes tight and it came
through my lips before I even knew I had the thought.
“I want to be that for you.”
“
Fuck
,” he bit out. His word scoring
into me like a lash, Noc lifted, turning me again to my back.
Insinuating his hips between my legs so they opened to accommodate
him, I felt his palm cup my cheek and heard his demand. “Open your
eyes.”
I did as commanded.
“The first I knew of you, you loved a man so
deeply, you put your life on the line twice, first committing
treason, which I know in Lunwyn is a hanging offense, and then
facing those witches. Does that come from a soul that’s
midnight?”
“Noc—”
“You don’t know it, don’t see it, but even
before your relationship shifted, you treated Josette with more
care and respect than any of those people treated what they
considered their inferiors, save Cora, Circe and Finnie, who aren’t
from there and don’t know how to act the blue blood even though
they now are. And don’t think she didn’t know it, Frannie. Don’t
think Josette is here for whatever you pay her or for an adventure.
She’s here
for you
. She’s here to be
with you
. She’s
here because, to her, you’re family. Is that kind of loyalty earned
by a dark soul?”
He
really
had to stop because I felt
them brimming and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold them back.
Especially when Noc saw them and shifted his
hand at my cheek so his thumb swept below my eye. Releasing the
tear into the pad of his thumb, he skimmed the wet along my temple
as he dipped his face close.
“You grew up without any love,” he whispered,
and gods,
gods
, I saw it in his eyes as well. The bright
gathering there, his own wet gleaming. “I have no fuckin’ clue how
you survived, baby. I’ve known love every day of my life and I
cannot imagine the man I’d be if I didn’t. If my life was void of
it. If I had to find my way without that as the single-most
prevalent guiding force from the minute my mom died giving me life
to this moment with you. I could only hope that I’d become what
you’ve become against every odd. A woman starved of love her whole
life and yet so fuckin’ full of it, she’d stand holding a hook with
blood running down her thighs just so the brother she adored
wouldn’t have to do it. You don’t have a midnight soul, Frannie.
Your soul is so bright, I look too close, I’d be blinded.”
“Please.” My voice broke, I swallowed and
finished on a return whisper, “Please stop talking, my love.”
“I will you answer this. Do you have a
midnight soul?” he asked.
“Apparently not,” I continued whispering.
And apparently, I actually did not.
“No, you do not,” he affirmed. “Am I gonna
hear that again?”
I shook my head.
“You gonna think it?”
I shook my head again (though it was perhaps
more hesitant than the first).
Noc, of course, did not miss it.
“You think it, baby, you give that shit to me
and I’ll remind you what makes you. We got a deal?”
I nodded.
“Promise me,” he demanded.
I drew in a trembling breath before I gave
him what he asked.
“I promise, darling.”
He let that drift between us before he dipped
closer and spoke again gently, his thumb caressing the apple of my
cheek.
“There is not a single soul on this earth who
has not done things they regret, Frannie. Multiple things. Years of
doing stupid shit or mean shit or thoughtless shit or whatever.
It’s part of growing up. It’s part of life. It’s part of surviving.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone finds their way. You were who you
had to be. It’s just the way it was. And now it isn’t that way and
you aren’t that way either. You said earlier it’s our future, not
the past that interests you. But you’re still livin’ in the past,
sweetheart. Let it go. Be with me.
Really
be here with me.
Because I love you here, baby, and what we got, it’s a beautiful
place to be.”
He was right.
Very, very right.
That was that past. That was the way it was
and now it wasn’t that way anymore.
I
wasn’t that way anymore.
I was free to be the real me.
“You’re right, Noc.”
“I know.”
The arrogance of his words made me give him a
shaky grin.
His other hand came to my opposite cheek and
he swept the tear that dropped there across that temple.
“I dislike weeping,” I muttered.
“God gave us a variety of ways to get hurt
out and do it clean. Blood cleans a wound. Tears clean a different
kind of wound. You might not like it, Frannie, but you shouldn’t
stop yourself from doing it. Clean the wound so it can heal. Then
move on.”
By the gods, I really could take no more.
“You do know you’re demonstrating my earlier
point, being handsome, having a magnificent physique, being
thoughtful, kind, patient, intuitive and wise, all this meaning
you’re rather perfect, do you not?” I noted.
Noc continued his acute study of me before
his expression cleared and his lips tipped up.
“You wanna think I’m perfect, sugarlips, be
my guest. My point was never about arguing yours.”
This was true.
But I was done.
“Can we go to sleep?” I requested.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
I actually was.
Exhausted.
It seemed coming to terms with your
wonderfulness took a good deal out of you.
I nodded.
His voice quieted. “Then yeah, gorgeous, you
want, we can go to sleep.”
“Are you tired?” I queried.
“Not so much.”
“Then—”
“You’re down with it, I’ll turn on the TV. I
watch, you sleep. You can’t get to sleep with the TV on, I’ll turn
it off and read. Cool?”
I nodded.
Noc dipped in for a lip brush but when he was
done, he pulled only slightly away.
“That was heavy, you okay?” he asked
gently.
I nodded, though in truth I wasn’t.
But I suspected I would be.
“Gonna be a hard promise to keep, the promise
you made me, but want you to keep it, Frannie.”
I drew in a deep breath and let it go.
“I’ll keep it, Noc,” I promised again.
His face again assumed a version of the sated
contentment he’d had before. It did not run as deep but it was
still there.
He was pleased.
Which made me pleased.
He dipped in for something much deeper than a
lip brush before he rolled off me and rearranged us, the covers,
and turned off the lights, but he turned on the television that was
resting on a cabinet at the other side of the room beyond the end
of the bed.
He lay with head and shoulders propped on
pillows, holding me tucked close to his side, my cheek to his
ribs.
I held him around the stomach and stared at
the perfect hair on his chest, feeling his finger again drawing
languid patterns, this time on the skin just below the small of my
back.
Healthy skin, where I could feel his caress
and what he wished it to communicate to me.
And I felt his caress.
But more, I felt what he wished it to
communicate.
I was there,
really
there, with him,
where he wanted me to be, where he liked me to be, a good, safe,
healthy place. And he wanted me right there, and a man like Noc
would not chose a woman to be right there if she did not deserve to
be.
The sound of the television strangely did not
distract me from falling asleep.
Strangely, it and Noc’s warmth, his nearness,
his touch, his simply
being
and being with me lulled me to
sleep.
And when I slept, I slept deep, snuggled up
to sheer perfection.
Fallen for Me
Franka
I sat alone at a table in one of Valentine’s
sitting rooms, looking into my crystal ball that sat atop its
lovely pillow of sapphire-blue velvet.
I was trying to concentrate, but although I’d
been in it now for a full five days, I didn’t know this world
enough to understand the visions I was calling up.
Not to mention, I had on my mind the fact
that the three homes Valentine’s agent had shown us the day before
were not to my, Josette’s, or even Noc’s liking, something, in our
depth of discussion of each we’d had over dinner the evening
before, had become clear.
We had another “showing” that day and my mind
was also on that, as I was finding more with each passing day the
need to settle, not only myself but Josette.
Valentine had no opinion on the houses we’d
seen since she was not there to view them with us.
In fact, I had not seen her since she
introduced Josette and me to the wonders of the curling iron. Our
only communication was through texts, notes she left and messages
delivered to us by her secretary or the man who was her
caretaker.
This irked me, greatly, and the longer it
lasted the more irksome it became.
Yes, one could say that our time had been
full since our arrival so our need of Valentine’s presence was not
great. There was much to do, see and experience, and Noc was being
lovely with offering us all of that.
This included his promise of taking Josette
and me to Bourbon Street the evening before last, a place I knew
was where I’d been spirited to upon entering this world due to the
familiarity of its noise, but mostly its smell.
“Spilled booze, puke and bodies, baby, all
baked in the sun,” Noc had explained the smell. “In other words,
the aroma of a really fuckin’ good time.”
I did not agree.
That was I did not agree until he introduced
Josette and I to hurricanes, which were
delicious
, and jazz,
a music that was
extraordinary
.
Halfway through hurricane one, we’d commenced
having great fun and met the many fast friends around us who were a
delight (and who I would not then remember even if they walked up
to me and offered me an embrace, such was the potency of
hurricanes, something which Noc told us to stop partaking of at
one, and Josette and I had each had three).
Through this experience I was realizing that
my preference for my own world was partly my loyalty to it as well
as my familiarity of it.
Fleuridia was much different than Hawkvale,
which was much different than Lunwyn.